The
Admissions Game
In
today’s world, applying to college has become a stressor for every teenager.
From the beginning of high school, students are constantly reminded of their
eventual goal – getting accepted to a top university. Every test they take,
every paper they write, and every grade they earn seems to have the power to
change their whole future. It is no wonder that a rejection letter from a
college can devastate a student when he has spent four years diligently
studying and working towards his goal. Disappointment soon turns to frustration
and even anger when one realizes that a seemingly unimportant factor has led to
his rejection. Colleges place too much importance on aspects of applications
that are simply out of students’ control and hold teenagers to impossibly high
standards. In this day and age, hard work, impressive grades and outstanding
test scores are simply not enough to guarantee admission to top colleges. Too
many other factors are at play over which the student has little power.
Arguably the most controversial issue in today’s college admissions
process is affirmative action. According to the Merriam-Webster online
dictionary, affirmative action is “an active effort to improve the employment
or educational opportunities of members of minority groups...” (Merriam-Webster). In everyday
language, when colleges employ affirmative action programs, they set lower
standards for admission for minority students than for
non-minority students. A minority student may presumably be accepted to a
college in place of a non-minority with a higher GPA and standardized test
scores. In 1992, African-Americans who were admitted to Stanford University
scored, on average, about 170 points lower on the SAT than white students
admitted to the school (Sacks,
Thiel). This number has only risen in recent years. Nowadays, the
difference can reach 150-300 points (Allen, 287). Some argue that these
affirmative action policies are necessary to make up for past prejudice and
racism in America, or to give disadvantaged, poor minorities a ‘leg up’ while
applying to college. However, holding some students to different standards than
others is simply unfair. A student cannot control what race or ethnicity he or
she belongs to. The only thing a student can control is the amount of effort he
puts into his schoolwork and grades. If one student is rejected to make room
for a student with lower grades and a different skin color, the rejected
student has every right to be frustrated and upset with the college admissions
system.
One of the reasons that colleges employ affirmative action techniques is
that diversity on campus is desirable. The definition of diversity includes
more than just ethnicity and race. It includes the number of men and women on
campus, and colleges are concerned with making this ratio as close to equal as
possible. In current years, more women have been applying to college than men,
so colleges are faced with an interesting decision to make (Whitmire). If there
are more qualified women applicants than men, solely because women apply in
larger numbers, should universities accept a predominantly female freshman
class? Many universities are concerned that doing so would not develop the best
possible campus community, so they hold female applicants to slightly higher
standards than men. Admitting male applicants who are less qualified than women
is especially prevalent in “small, private liberal arts colleges that have a
hard time attracting men.” (Whitmire). This gender-biased process may anger
women, but it is simply how the admissions process must work if incoming
freshman classes are to remain at a suitable male to female ratio. This process
is not as extreme as some affirmative action policies, but still has the same
model and effect on prospective students. Students cannot control what gender
they are, but this factor manages to influence their college applications.
In
the same way that a student cannot control his cultural background, he cannot
control where he currently lives. A student’s geographic location can play a
huge role in whether he is accepted to the college of his dreams. In-state and
out-of-state applicants face unique challenges or advantages, depending on the
college in question. Some universities want to remain loyal to in-state
applicants, making out-of-state students’ chances at acceptance much slimmer.
Moreover, the immense difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition can
influence universities’ decisions and limit students’ realistic options during
the admissions process. According to a professor of environmental studies at
The University of Colorado at Boulder, two-thirds of the 26,000 undergraduates
at his college are from the state of Colorado and pay $7,700 a year in tuition.
Out-of-state students take up the rest of the student body and pay $29,000
yearly. Because the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition is so
great, “…almost two-thirds of the university's total tuition revenue comes from
one-third of its students. Thus, the financial viability of the institution
depends upon securing a large proportion of nonresidents, which creates
incentives to favor their admission. That is contrary to the very purpose of
in-state tuition, which is to favor Colorado residents” (Pielke Jr.).
Pielke Jr.’s
information raises a few interesting concerns for applicants. Universities
place high value on out-of-state students, solely for the amount of money that
they will attract to the school if accepted. Even though the majority of
admitted freshmen to large state universities apply from the state itself, the
numbers of out-of-state acceptances are quickly rising. This trend is especially
obvious in the UC system. The number of out-of-state freshman that were
accepted to UC schools in 2012 rose 43 percent from 2011. In 2011, 13,144
out-of-state students were admitted to UC schools, and in 2012 there were
18,846 out-of-state freshman admitted. In-state applicants’ acceptance rates
only rose by about 3 percent (Yamamura). Admitting larger numbers of
out-of-state students increases a university’s cash flow dramatically. However,
this worries in-state applicants who wonder if they will be rejected to make
room for equally qualified students who will simply have to pay more money to
attend.
The huge difference between tuition
rates can put pressure on out-of-state applicants as well. A student’s family
may not be able to afford the pricey tuition for an out-of-state school and
have to decline, leaving him disappointed. Today, 41 percent of high school
seniors are thinking about only attending in-state-schools in order to save
money. At some universities, the rate at which out-of-state students decline
admission has risen 40 percent in the past few years. (Gloecker). This
information shows another side to the discrepancy between tuition rates.
Students now must turn away from their acceptance letters and choose to go to a
different schools than their top choices because their families cannot afford to
send them to schools outside of their home state. Students from all over the
country are suffering – those who wish to attend a school that is out of
financial reach, or those who are being replaced in favor of those who must pay
more money because they are from another state. A high-school student has no
control over where he lives, and it is unfair that he could presumably miss out
on attending his dream school because of it.
If
a student is fortunate enough to be a legacy at a certain college, his chances
of being admitted will greatly increase. According to the Research in Higher
Education Journal, legacy students are “…
nearly 20 percent more likely to be admitted to selective colleges and
universities than other students” (Martin, Spenner). More shockingly, a study
of Duke University found that “Duke legacies have, on average, double the
chances of admission compared to non-legacy applicants.” (Martin, Spenner). In
the 2012 version of the Princeton Review, a book that explores the admissions
requirements of elite colleges, Duke University was reported to have a 22
percent acceptance rate (Franek, Braswell, Soto, 225). Using the information
from the Research in Higher Education Journal, one can assume that Duke legacy applicants enjoy a 44 percent
acceptance rate.
Duke is only one
example of this system. Legacy students fill up large percentages of most elite
colleges, such as the University of Notre Dame and Ivy League universities. According
to Research in Higher Education, “Over
1/5 of Notre Dame freshmen are alumni children, as well as 10-15 percent at Ivy
League and other elite schools.” Even though legacy students are more likely to
come from affluent backgrounds and are predominantly white, they enjoy similar
advantages while applying to their parents’ alma maters that
minority students would when applying to the same school. When colleges are
scrutinizing applicants’ SAT scores, “… legacy applicants receive the equivalent
of an 160 point boost” (Martin, Spenner). Applying this information to the
requirements for an elite university illuminates the significance of this
‘point boost’. According to the Princeton Review’s 377 Best Colleges, the minimum SAT scores that students must achieve to
get into Yale University are 700 for critical reading, 710 for math, and 710
for writing (Franek, Braswell, Soto, 811). A legacy student could presumably be
admitted if he had only scored 540 points on the critical reading section, and 550
on math and writing. Figure 1, on the next page, presents a visual
representation of this information. Furthermore, according to Andrew Allen, a
former college counselor, it is “…common for a college with 2,000 freshman
seats [available] to have 150-400 of them reserved for legatees” (Allen, 288).
One may wonder why
legacy students receive such preferential treatment. They cannot control where
their parents attended college, and this information adds nothing to their
personal achievements and merit. Legacies are so desirable to elite
universities because they develop a sense of tradition and loyalty to the
college community (Whitmire). While legacy students help create a family
attachment to a certain school, they also indirectly attract large amounts of money.
Colleges are especially interested in so-called “development cases.” These are
students whose alumni parents or relatives are either currently donating or
likely to donate considerable funds to the university if their child is
accepted (Martin, Spenner). Admitting legacy students is in fact a smart
economic move for universities. However, it gives students an unfair advantage
for something that they have absolutely
no control over. If students are lucky enough to have an alumni parent, they
are held to lower academic standards than non-legacy applicants. At most elite
universities, an alumni connection is not enough to excuse a truly poor
academic record, but it is enough to give a student an advantage over another equally
qualified applicant. Giving preference to legacy students is comparable to
giving preference to minorities and students living in different states. All of
these factors are ones that the student cannot control, yet these factors can
control the student’s future.
There are some
factors that are not as far out of students’ control as their ethnicity, what
state they live in, or their family connections. Teenagers are well aware that
grades and standardized test scores are not the only aspects of their application
under scrutiny. The extracurricular activities that they participate in during
high school can heavily influence their chances of getting accepted. Leadership
roles, years spent playing sports, community service, club membership, and
other activities all look impressive on an application. Colleges look for a
multifaceted student who can balance many extracurricular activities with
rigorous schoolwork. The Mark Anderson political cartoon below (Figure 2) mocks
how colleges expect students to excel in every activity they undertake.
It
is true that students must participate in many extracurricular activities in
order to be a competitive applicant for most colleges. It also is true that
students can control how involved they are in these activities, and that
colleges are justified in choosing students who participate most in sports and
clubs. However, some students are inherently more athletically talented than
others, and universities demand far less academic excellence from recruited athletes
than they do from other students (Rotherham). According to the Research in
Higher Education Journal, admitted recruited athletes’ SAT scores can be around
200 points lower than their less athletically-gifted peers (Martin, Spenner).
Not only does this process admit students who are less academically talented
than their rejected peers, it does a disservice to the athletes themselves. If
one of these student-athletes is admitted to an elite university that he does
not meet the academic requirements for, he will most
likely not be able to handle the level of schoolwork that the university
demands. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, but this pattern has
been developing at universities for decades. According to New York Times
columnist Joe Nolera, “Since 2003, when the NCAA stopped mandatory minimum SAT
or ACT scores, university athletic departments have been accepting more and
more ‘student-athletes’ who can barely do high-school work, much less handle
college” (Kelley).
This practice is
hurting both the student-athletes and the so-called ‘normal’ students applying
to college. Elite universities should only accept students who can meet their
academic requirements, regardless of athletic talent. This would be fair to the
students who achieve remarkable grades but are not gifted at sports, and are
rejected to make room for incredible athletes who are not talented in the
classroom. It also would help remedy the high drop-out rates
of college student-athletes, and prevent those individuals from becoming
overwhelmed with the rigor of elite universities.
Students
face more pressure than ever when applying to college. If huge applicant pools
and cutthroat competition were not intimidating enough, talented and qualified
students face rejection because of numerous factors beyond their control.
Getting accepted to an elite university is not unlike a baseball player
pitching a perfect game. The pitcher must be exceptional in every respect, and
most of the game’s success can be attributed to him. However, a perfect game
also depends on outstanding defensive play and other factors that the pitcher
cannot control. Like the pitcher, brilliant students applying to elite
universities should devote their energy to the things that they can
control, and not allow the
uncontrollable factors to discourage them from reaching for the stars.
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